(no subject)
itch
prompt: this
orig. fic.
She couldn't stop scratching herself. There was no rash. It wasn't the heat. Insects tended to stay away from her body. Her mother had said it was because her blood wasn't sweet. Her mother said this over breakfast once. She watched her father cut his omelette into neat squares with his fork. He put his fork down between bites and chewed precisely.
She had the tea-shop boy break down a twig of neem for her. She waved this arm of consolation over her own limbs at night. She slept in her lightest cotton shirts. She bathed twice a day. The itch got worse and she couldn't even keep her nails off her chest, her ankles, her belly, her ear in public. On buses, at the grocer's, in school. She came home early one day, on the brink of tears.
Her mother was short-sighted. Her mother peered at her back through two pairs of spectacles under the strongest lightbulb in the house. Her mother pressed fingers on the pale skin of her back, ready to decipher its braille. None appeared.
It was decided that she would have to see a doctor. For once they went to the clinic in a taxi. She had welts criss-crossing her body, dotted lines piecemealed on her body. Her nails had blunted from the force of her scratching.
The doctor examined her with a distant eye and prescribed two capsules and one ointment. The doctor then turned to her mother, lowered his voice and recommended a good psychiatrist he knew.
That night she sat with her head under a running tap in the bathroom for ten minutes. She held her breath for as long as she could. Afterwards she tip-toed back to her bedroom and lay down and dreamed that all the scratching had loosened her skin, revealing its seams, exposing its panelling. That she only had to tug gently, ever so gently, for the whole thing to come off. Underneath she was slippery, impossibly naked, impossibly cool. A network of nerves and veins that seemed translucent, pulsing with light. She felt something burst inside her, transfigure her entirely. She wanted to cry, it was ecstasy.
--
prompt: this
orig. fic.
She couldn't stop scratching herself. There was no rash. It wasn't the heat. Insects tended to stay away from her body. Her mother had said it was because her blood wasn't sweet. Her mother said this over breakfast once. She watched her father cut his omelette into neat squares with his fork. He put his fork down between bites and chewed precisely.
She had the tea-shop boy break down a twig of neem for her. She waved this arm of consolation over her own limbs at night. She slept in her lightest cotton shirts. She bathed twice a day. The itch got worse and she couldn't even keep her nails off her chest, her ankles, her belly, her ear in public. On buses, at the grocer's, in school. She came home early one day, on the brink of tears.
Her mother was short-sighted. Her mother peered at her back through two pairs of spectacles under the strongest lightbulb in the house. Her mother pressed fingers on the pale skin of her back, ready to decipher its braille. None appeared.
It was decided that she would have to see a doctor. For once they went to the clinic in a taxi. She had welts criss-crossing her body, dotted lines piecemealed on her body. Her nails had blunted from the force of her scratching.
The doctor examined her with a distant eye and prescribed two capsules and one ointment. The doctor then turned to her mother, lowered his voice and recommended a good psychiatrist he knew.
That night she sat with her head under a running tap in the bathroom for ten minutes. She held her breath for as long as she could. Afterwards she tip-toed back to her bedroom and lay down and dreamed that all the scratching had loosened her skin, revealing its seams, exposing its panelling. That she only had to tug gently, ever so gently, for the whole thing to come off. Underneath she was slippery, impossibly naked, impossibly cool. A network of nerves and veins that seemed translucent, pulsing with light. She felt something burst inside her, transfigure her entirely. She wanted to cry, it was ecstasy.
--